page_title: Sundial cannon
section_title: Popular Mechanics
hierarchical_section_title: Sundial cannon / Popular Mechanics
caption_attribution_description: English: Sundial Cannon as depicted in Popular Mechanics in 1911
context_page_description: A sundial cannon, sundial gun, noon cannon or meridian cannon, also noonday gun is a device consisting of a sundial incorporating a cannon with a fuse that is lit by an overhanging lens, concentrating the rays of the sun, and causing the cannon to fire at noon, when properly oriented along a north–south axis. The cannon sizes ranged from large to small depending on the location of their use. The household variety was used in estates to signal the time for the midday meal. Larger sizes were used in European parks to signal noon.
  The cannons were used by European royalty in the 18th century. Cannons of this type are exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The Hamilton Watch Company has a sundial cannon manufactured by Rousseau of Paris ca. 1650. The Rousseau cannon is mounted on a marble sundial and is made of brass. The Sultan of Morocco also owns one that was manufactured by Baker & Sons of London.
context_section_description: In a section of the July 1911 issue of Popular Mechanics titled "Women 'Insurgents' in the Farming Business" the writer comments regarding the picture to the right: 
  Whatever may be surmised at first glance, the lady of the exaggerated jupe-culotte is not a member of the Mexican insurrectionist artillery preparing to defend her pretty little private fort against the forces of the tyrant Diaz. The insurrection, however, is all there and all directed against the tyrant Man. In fine, she of the honest workingman's jeans is one of the suffragette farmerettes now being turned out by Mrs Belmont's Long Island colony—to the general end that they may run the earth in absolute independence of the legitimate occupants of similar jeans. The cannon is a sort of emancipated dinnerbell, and the thing that looks like one end of a stereoscope is a lens rigged to the sundial which forms the cannon's bed. As the sun works around to noon, the solar rays are focused on the fuse, and with the blast, liberated woman knows that dinner is served. And, if one pause to wonder, this is a refined and soothing way to fire a cannon. Having set the mechanism, even an average walker can put ten miles of quiet open country between herself and the chance of shattered eardrums and lacerated nerves.
caption: A farmer shown adjusting the lens position for a sundial cannon. From an article titled "Women 'Insurgents' in the Farming Business" in the July 1911 issue of Popular Mechanics. The original caption is: "Adjusting the Sundial which Sets Off the Cannon Automatically at Noon"
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